Appt with Dr. Einhorn

Sean had an appointment with Dr. Einhorn here in Indianapolis this afternoon. The purpose of this appointment was just to serve as a follow-up to his surgery and to let us know what the next steps are going to be.

First of all he said that the tumor marker's for the blood that they drew on Saturday as our baseline came back and our baseline AFP level is 75. The lab at the office took another blood sample today from Sean and they'll run the tests on that to see what the AFP is down to now that it's been long enough to know for sure if there's any cancer activity left or not. The goal is to have his AFP levels come back normal when we get the results back in a few days.

As long as Sean's levels are normal, Dr. Einhorn recommends doing AFP checks through bloodwork once a month for the 1st year starting now. So, if he can stay clear on the AFP's all the way through July of 2010, then they will move the bloodwork out to once every 4 months for the next year. Dr. Einhorn also said that he wants Sean to have regular chest x-rays along with the bloodwork so we'll work all of that out with Dr. Chandramouli's office back home. He has an appointment with Dr. Chandramouli next week so we'll update again after that.

Sean is feeling alright, he's been up and moving about the past couple of days but gets worn out very easily. He's still taking pain medication to help with the pain from surgery but he is able to go longer between dosages so that's a good sign. We're flying home tomorrow morning and are looking forward to getting back into the swing of things. I start work again on Monday morning and Sean will go back to work once he is completley healed from his surgery, which will probably be sometime in late August or September.

We'd like to post a thanks to Ed and Teresa Major for their amazingly generous hospitality. They put us up in their home while we've been here despite it being on the real estate market and having to be kept at show-quality! We've been very blessed, once again, by these two and their Christian-love and we hope to be able to repay it back to someone else in need when we are able to in the future. We'll look forward to seeing them when they come out to Salt Lake for a visit with the Kriech's in September.